There is currently a proliferation of organizational networked systems. Every type of organization, be it a commercial company, a university, a bank, a government agency or a hospital, heavily relies on one or more networks interconnecting multiple computing nodes. Failures of the networked system of an organization or even of only a portion of it might cause a significant damage, up to completely shutting down all operations. Additionally, much of the data of the organization (and for some organizations even all data) exists somewhere on its networked system, including all confidential data comprising its “crown jewels” such as prices, details of customers, purchase orders, employees' salaries, technical formulas, etc. Loss of such data or leaks of such data to outside unauthorized entities might be disastrous for the organization.
Many organizational networks are connected to the Internet at least through one network node, and consequently they are subject to attacks by computer hackers or by hostile adversaries. Even an organizational network that is not connected to the Internet might be attacked by an employee of the organization. Quite often the newspapers are reporting incidents in which websites crashed, sensitive data was stolen or service to customers was denied, where the failures were the results of hostile penetration into an organization's networked system.
Thus, many organizations invest a lot of efforts and costs in preventive means designed to protect their networked systems against potential threats. There are many defensive products offered in the market claiming to provide protection against one or more known modes of attack, and many organizations arm themselves to the teeth with multiple products of this kind.
However, it is difficult to tell how effective such products really are in achieving their stated goals of blocking hostile attacks, and consequently most CISO's (Computer Information Security Officers) will admit (maybe only off the record), that they don't really know how well they can withstand an attack from a given adversary. The only way to really know how strong and secure a networked system is, is by trying to attack it as a real adversary would. This is known as penetration testing (pen testing, in short), and is a very common approach that is even required by regulation in some developed countries.
Penetration testing requires highly talented people to man the testing team. Those people should be familiar with each and every known security vulnerability and attacking method and should also have a very good familiarity with networking techniques and multiple operating systems implementations. Such people are hard to find and therefore many organizations give up establishing their own penetration testing teams and resort to hiring external expert consultants for carrying out that role (or completely give up penetration testing). But external consultants are expensive and therefore are typically called in only for brief periods separated by long time intervals in which no such testing is done. This makes the penetration testing ineffective as security vulnerabilities caused by new forms of attacks that appear almost daily are discovered only months after becoming serious threats to the organization.
Additionally, even rich organizations that can afford hiring talented experts for in-house penetration testing teams do not achieve good protection. Testing for security vulnerabilities of a large networked system containing many types of computers, operating systems, network routers and other devices is both a very complex and a very tedious process. The process is prone to human errors of missing testing for certain threats or misinterpreting the damages of certain attacks. Also, because a process of full testing of a large networked system against all threats is quite long, the organization might again end with a too long discovery period after a new threat appears.
Because of the above deficiencies automated penetration testing solutions were introduced in recent years by multiple vendors. These automated solutions reduce human involvement in the penetration testing process, or at least in some of its functions.
A penetration testing process involves at least the following main functions: (i) a reconnaissance function, (ii) an attack function, and (ii) a reporting function. The process may also include additional functions, for example a cleanup function that restores the tested networked system to its original state as it was before the test. In an automated penetration testing system, at least one of the above three functions is at least partially automated, and typically two or three of them are at least partially automated.
A reconnaissance function is the function within a penetration testing system that handles the collection of data about the tested networked system. The collected data may include internal data of networks nodes, data about network traffic within the tested networked system, business intelligence data of the organization owning the tested networked system, etc. The functionality of a prior art reconnaissance function can be implemented, for example, by software executing in a server that is not one of the network nodes of the tested networked system, where the server probes the tested networked system for the purpose of collecting data about it.
An attack function is the function within a penetration testing system that handles the determination of whether security vulnerabilities exist in the tested networked system based on data collected by the reconnaissance function. The functionality of a prior art attack function can be implemented, for example, by software executing in a server that is not one of the nodes of the tested networked system, where the server attempts to attack the tested networked system for the purpose of verifying that it can be compromised.
A reporting function is the function within a penetration testing system that handles the reporting of results of the penetration testing system. The functionality of a prior art reporting function may be implemented, for example, by software executing in the same server that executes the functionality of the attack function, where the server reports the findings of the attack function to an administrator or a CISO of the tested networked system.
FIG. 1A (PRIOR ART) is a block diagram of code modules of a typical penetration testing system. FIG. 1B (PRIOR ART) is a related flow-chart.
In FIG. 1A, code for the reconnaissance function, for the attack function, and for the reporting function are respectively labelled as 20, 30 and 40, and are each schematically illustrated as part of a penetration testing system code module (PTSCM) labelled as 10. The term ‘code’ is intended broadly and may include any combination of computer-executable code and computer-readable data which when read affects the output of execution of the code. The computer-executable code may be provided as any combination of human-readable code (e.g. in a scripting language such as Python), machine language code, assembler code and byte code, or in any form known in the art. Furthermore, the executable code may include any stored data (e.g. structured data) such as configuration files, XML files, and data residing in any type of database (e.g. a relational database, an object-database, etc.).
In one example and as shown in FIG. 1B, the reconnaissance function (performed in step S21 by execution of reconnaissance function code 20), the attack function (performed in step S31 by execution of attack function code 30) and the reporting function (performed in step S41 by execution of reporting function code 40) are executed in strictly sequential order so that first the reconnaissance function is performed by executing code 20 thereof, then the attack function is performed by executing code 30 thereof, and finally the reporting function is performed 40 by executing code thereof. However, the skilled artisan will appreciate that this order is just one example, and is not a requirement. For example, the attack and the reporting functions may be performed in parallel or in an interleaved way, with the reporting function reporting first results obtained by the attack function, while the attack function is working on additional results. Similarly, the reconnaissance and the attack functions may operate in parallel or in an interleaved way, with the attack function detecting a vulnerability based on first data collected by the reconnaissance function, while the reconnaissance function is working on collecting additional data.
FIG. 1A also illustrates code of an optional cleanup function which is labeled as 50. Also illustrated in FIG. 1B is step S51 of performing a cleanup function—e.g. by cleanup function code 50 of FIG. 1A.
“A campaign of penetration testing” is a specific run of a specific test of a specific networked system by the penetration testing system.
A penetration-testing-campaign module may comprise at least part of reconnaissance function code 20, attack function code 30 and optionally cleanup function code 50—for example, in combination with suitable hardware (e.g. one or more computing device 110 and one or more processor(s) 120 thereof) for executing the code.
FIG. 2 illustrates a prior art computing device 110 which may have any form-factor including but not limited to a laptop, a desktop, a mobile phone, a server, a tablet, or any other form factor. The computing device 110 in FIG. 2 includes (i) computer memory 160 which may store code 180; (ii) one or more processors 120 (e.g. central-processing-unit (CPU)) for executing code 180; (iii) a human-interface device 140 (e.g. mouse, keyboard, touchscreen, gesture-detecting apparatus including a camera, etc.) or an interface (e.g. USB interface) to receive input from a human-interface device; (iv) a display device 130 (e.g. computer screen) or an interface (e.g. HDMI interface, USB interface) for exporting video to a display device and (v) a network interface 150 (e.g. a network card, or a wireless modem).
Memory 160 may include any combination of volatile (e.g. RAM) and non-volatile (e.g. ROM, flash, disk-drive) memory.
Code 180 may include operating-system code—e.g. Windows®, Linux®, Android®, Mac-OS®.
Computing device 110 may include a user-interface for receiving input from a user (e.g. manual input, visual input, audio input, or input in any other form) and for visually displaying output. The user-interface (e.g. graphical user interface (GUI)) of computing device 110 may thus include the combination of HID device 140 or an interface thereof (i.e. in communication with an external HID device 140), display device 130 or an interface thereof (i.e. in communication with an external display device), and user-interface (UI) code stored in memory 160 and executed by one or more processor(s) 120. The user-interface may include one or more GUI widgets such as labels, buttons (e.g. radio buttons or check boxes), sliders, spinners, icons, windows, panels, text boxes, and the like.
In one example, a penetration testing system is the combination of (i) code 10 (e.g. including reconnaissance function code 20, attack function code 30, reporting function code 40, and optionally cleaning function code 50); and (ii) one or more computing devices 110 which execute the code 10. For example, a first computing device may execute a first portion of code 10 and a second computing device (e.g. in networked communication with the first computing device) may execute a second portion of code 10.
FIGS. 3 and 4A-4D relate to a prior art example of penetration testing of a networked system. FIG. 3 shows a timeline—i.e. the penetration test begins at a time labelled as TBegin Pen-Test. Subsequent points in time, during the penetration test, are labelled in FIG. 3 as T1During Pen-Test, T2During Pen-Test and T3During Pen-Test.
FIG. 4A shows an example networked system comprising a plurality of 24 network nodes labelled N101, N102 . . . N124. In the present document, a network node may be referred to simply as ‘node’—‘network node’ and ‘node’ are interchangeable.
Each network node may be a different computing device 110. Two network nodes are “immediate neighbors” of each other if and only if they have a direct communication link between them that does not pass through any other network node.
In the example of FIG. 4A, this is represented by an edge between the two nodes—thus, in this example nodes N108 and N112 are immediate neighbors while nodes N108 and N115 are not immediate neighbors.
Embodiments of the invention relate to penetration testing of networked systems, such as that illustrated in FIG. 4A.
During penetration testing, a node may become compromised. In the examples of FIGS. 4A-4D compromised nodes are indicated by an “X” in the circle—all other nodes have not yet been compromised.
The term “compromising a network node” is defined as: Successfully causing execution of an operation in the network node that is not allowed for the entity requesting the operation by the rules defined by an administrator of the network node, or successfully causing execution of code in a software module of the network node that was not predicted by the vendor of the software module. Examples for compromising a network node are reading a file without having read permission for it, modifying a file without having write permission for it, deleting a file without having delete permission for it, exporting a file out of the network node without having permission to do so, getting an access right higher than the one originally assigned without having permission to get it, getting a priority higher than the one originally assigned without having permission to get it, changing a configuration of a firewall network node such that it allows access to other network nodes that were previously hidden behind the firewall without having permission to do it, and causing execution of software code by utilizing a buffer overflow. As shown by the firewall example, the effects of compromising a certain network node are not necessarily limited to that certain network node. In addition, executing successful ARP spoofing, denial-of-service, man-in-the-middle or session-hijacking attacks against a network node are also considered compromising that network node, even if not satisfying any of the conditions listed above in this definition.
According to the example illustrated in FIGS. 4A-4D, initially, at time TBegin Pen-Test, when the penetration test begins, none of the network-nodes have yet been compromised. Between time TBegin Pen-Test and T1During Pen-Test, network node N122 is compromised—this is indicated in FIG. 4B by the “X.” Between time T1During Pen-Test and T2During Pen-Test, network nodes N116 and N112 are compromised, as indicated by the X's in FIG. 4C. Between time T2During Pen-Test and T3During Pen-Test, network nodes N110 and N111 are compromised, as indicated by the X's in FIG. 4D.
In this particular example, it is assumed that it is easier for an attacker to compromise a node if one or more of its immediate neighbors has been compromised.